Sarah Kofman Rue Ordener Rue Labat 1994 Lecture

Sarah Kofman Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (1994) Lecture 3 Dr. John Mc. Keane Part I: General and Smothered Words Part II: Family in Rue Ordener, Rue Labat

Sarah Kofman General • Wrote on philosophy (Plato, Nietzsche) • … and on psychoanalysis (L’Enigme de la femme: la femme dans les textes de Freud, 1980) • A Parisian Jew, spoke Yiddish and Polish with her father. He was deported and killed in Auschwitz (see Paroles suffoquées, 1987) • Le Mépris des juifs. Nietzsche, les juifs, l’antisémitisme (1994) • Autobiographical text: Rue Ordener, rue Labat (1994) • Suicide in 1994 (on 150 th anniversary of Nietzsche’s birth)

Family’s migration to Paris • Arrival in France from Poland, 1929 • Kofman a French mistranscription of Kaufman • ‘A L’Haẏ [la maison de campagne de Mémé], je découvris ce qu’on appelle une famille et l’esprit de famille. J’étais étonnée qu’il fût possible de rassembler plusieurs générations. Sauf en photos, je n’avais jamais connu mes grands-mères, mes tantes, mes oncles ou mes cousins. Tous (ou presque) étaient morts au ghetto de Varsovie’ (Rue Ordener, Rue Labat p. 62). From Vishniac, A Vanished World

Historical Record • ‘My father: Bereck Kofman, born on October 10, 1900, in Sobin (Poland), taken to Drancy on July 16, 1942. Was in convoy no. 12, dated July 2, 1942, a convoy comprising 1, 000 deportees, 270 men and 730 women (aged 36 to 54): 270 men registered 54, 153 to 54, 422; 514 women selected for work, registered 13, 320 to 13, 833; 216 other women gassed immediately. It is recorded, there, in the Serge Klarsfeld Memorial: with its endless columns of names, its lack of pathos, its sobriety, the ‘neutrality’ of its information, this sublime memorial takes your breath away’ in Smothered Words, p. 10. in Smothered Words, p. 12:

The experience of the camps • ‘How could one imagine […] that these striped beings, carrying rocks and beams, harnessed to carriages in all weather, transported without a second thought like sick and idle beasts in cattle wagons in which they were kept for thirteen days without a crust of bread, forced to sleep on top of one another, crammed together on the ground or on straw, or on dank and dirty planks, make to resemble thick-hided animals, to resemble ‘anything that only fights in order to eat and dies from not eating’, to the point that all animals had become for them luxuriant and sumptuous, could, in fact, speak? How could one imagine that words, rather than bleats, barks, or grunts, would emanate from the mouths of these nightmarish creatures, who threw themselves on dog biscuits, pounced on a pail of leftovers, decovered peelings, and clawed at the earth to extract some thorn or piece of detritus from it? When they were not afraid – the height of sacrilege – to piss and shit in churches? Could these still be men, when they could no longer stand upright, or even haul stones properly, when they were ravaged and bent over by the cold, and couldn’t look the SS in the eye? ’ in Smothered Words, p. 43.

Theoretical Perspective • ‘Because he was a Jew, my father died in Auschwitz: how can it not be said? And how can it be said? How can one speak of the before which all possibility of speech ceases? Of this event, my absolute, which communicates with the absolute of history, and which is of interest only for this reason. To speak: it is necessary – without (the) power: without allowing language, too powerful, sovereign, to master the most aporetic situation, absolute powerlessness and distress itself, to enclose it in the clarity and positivity of daylight. And how can one not speak of it, when the wish of all those who returned – and he did not return – has been to tell, to tell endlessly […]? Smothered Words, pp. 9 -10.

Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (Paris 18 e)

Some views of the family • ‘The Personal is Political’ (1970 s feminist slogan). • ‘Blood runs thicker than water’ (proverb). • Judaism passed down through the mother The irreplacable; the gift. Antigone in the eponymous tragedy by Sophocles: ‘I could have had another husband | And by him other sons, if one were lost; | But, father and mother lost, where would I get another brother ? ’

Father I • Bereck Kofman. • Rabbi of synagogue in Rue Duc, Paris 18 e. • ‘De lui, il me reste seulement le stylo. Je l’ai pris un jour dans le sac de ma mère où elle le gardait avec d’autres souvenirs de mon père. Un stylo comme l’on n’en fait plus, et qu’il fallait remplir avec de l’encre. Je m’en suis servie pendant toute ma scolarité. Il m’a “lâchée” avant que je puisse me décider à l’abandonner. Je le possède toujours, rafistolé avec du scotch, il est devant mes yeux sur la table de travail et il me contraint à écrire, écrire. • Mes nombreux livres ont peut-être été des voies de traverse obligées pour parvenir à raconter “ça”’ (opening ; p. 9).

Father II • ‘Après la guerre, arrive l’acte de décès d’Auschwitz. D’autres déportés reviennent. Un Yom Kippour, à la synagogue, l’un d’eux prétend avoir connu mon père à Auschwitz. Il y aurait survécu un an. Un boucher juif, devenu kapo (revue du camp de la mort, il a rouvert boutique rue des Rosiers) l’aurait abattu à coups de pioche et enterré vivant, un jour où il aurait refusé de travailler. C’était un Shabbat : il ne faisait aucun mal, aurait-il dit, il priait seulement Dieu pour nous tous, victimes et bourreaux’ (p. 16).

Two mothers I • p. 43 ff rue Labat – the French ‘“dame”’ • Mémé [= granny] tries to change Sarah’s diet (p. 48) and hair (p. 49)

Two mothers II • p. 47 biological mother initially stays with French family • ‘[ma mère] tolérait surtout très mal la tendresse que me manifestatit mémé, qu’elle estimait excessive’ (p. 49). • Mother’s day, chooses nicer card for Mémé: ‘J’ai honte et je me sens rougir dans la boutique. Mon choix vient bel et bien d’être fait, ma préférence déclarée’ (p. 55). • pp. 65 -66 further disregard for mother • pp. 70 -71 court case, S shows bruises to be allowed to stay with Mémé. Seized by mother, is relieved.

Parallels with other works • Reproduces list of those who died in Auschwitz (Modiano) • ‘Mes nombreux livres ont peut-être été des voies de traverse obligées pour parvenir à raconter “ça”’ (p. 9); p. 85 links room she he in to her work Camera obscura: biographical key to other work (Modiano) • ‘La voyante – extralucide ! – déclara qu’un grand danger menaçait mon père. Elle le voyait entouré de flammes, et aussi de hautes cheminées en train de fumer’ (pp. 34 -35). Wiesel.